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'Great Wilderness' touches on loaded social issue

David Lyman, Special to Cincinnati Enquirer
Published 8:53 a.m. ET April 28, 2018

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Caleb Farley (L) and Allen R. Middleton are featured in the Falcon Theatre’s production of Samuel D. Hunter’s “A Great Wilderness.” The show, which runs May 4-19, deals with, among other things, gay conversion therapy.(Photo: Photo: Kristy Rucker)

Allen R. Middleton plays the role of Walt in the Falcon Theatre’s production of Samuel D. Hunter’s “A Great Wilderness.” As he nears the end of his career running a Christian retreat working with gay conversion therapy, Walt is questioning many of the things his life and career were based on. The show runs May 4-19.(Photo: Photo: Kristy Rucker)

Ted Weil doesn’t recall how “A Great Wilderness” got on Falcon Theatre’s play-reading list. That’s the list of plays a committee of trusted colleagues cobbles together every year as the first step to selecting plays for Falcon’s upcoming season.

As the theater’s artistic director, Weil makes the final decision. But wants as much input as he can get. All sorts of scripts make their way onto the list. Old plays, new plays, comedies, even the occasional musical. But Samuel D. Hunter’s “A Great Wilderness” seemed to come out of nowhere.

The play premiered at Seattle Repertory Theater in 2014. But other than a small handful of subsequent productions, it seems to have disappeared off the radar.

“I don’t understand why it hasn’t been performed more,” says Clint Ibele, who is directing the show for the Falcon. “It’s so timely and so moving.”

And, he might have added, it begins with an ultra-loaded hot-button issue – gay conversion therapy. The term covers all manner of treatment, some harsh, some violent and some – as in this play – not all that different from traditional sit-on-the-couch-and-talk therapy.

No matter what approach it takes, conversion therapy had one goal – to take people who identify as gay and “turn them straight.”

As “A Great Wilderness” opens, we meet Walt, the elderly leader of a well-worn Christian retreat center on the edge of the Idaho wilderness. He is welcoming Daniel, who will be Walt’s final client before he turns the reins of the center over to others to run.

There is none of the fiery homophobic rhetoric you might imagine from a play like this. There is no violence. No one is kidnapped, though all three of those scenarios are common in the 40 or so states in which conversion therapy is still legal. (For the record, The American Psychiatric Association opposes such treatment based solely on the assumption that homosexuality is a mental disorder.)

Indeed, what sets “A Great Wilderness” apart from so much theater that revolves around emotionally charged social issues is its unwillingness to condemn any of the play’s six characters.

“I know most people are going to walk in the door and already have a strong opinion if this sort of thing is okay or not,” says Allen R. Middleton, who plays Walt. “For me, the important thing about Walt is that the audience has to understand he’s not a bad guy. This is just where he comes from.”

Then Middleton reveals something that has given the play a special resonance for him.

“I was involved in gay conversion therapy in my 20s,” he says. “I got married and had children and realized after having been through that process that was not my truth. It was a very hard thing to come to terms with.”

Even though most reputable health organizations regard conversion therapy as a pseudoscience, Middleton says that he is unwilling to call it “fraudulent. For people I knew, it was their personal truth. It was the way they were able to live their lives.”

It’s an extraordinarily evenhanded approach to something he admits was so wrong for him. But then, that is one of the most unusual aspects of Hunter’s script – that is committed to being non-judgmental.

“That’s what makes this play so important, I think,” says Weil. “This play is about reaching across the aisle. That’s something we don’t do well in America. I think it’s fair to say that the majority of theatergoers tend to be more liberal-minded.”

Plays that take a more conservative bent rarely make it to the professional stage. In fact, more often than not, characters that are devoutly religious or are politically conservative tend to be comic relief.

“That’s a real shortcoming of the theater,” says Weil. “We’ve tried as a company to not take sides. The plays do. But not us. We just don’t believe that’s the best way to approach things. You have to look at both sides. That’s what theater should be about – people, not politics. Theater is about people, where they come from and how they get there. That should be fascinating no matter what your beliefs.”